Many people have their own story about 9/11—what it meant to them. Lisa Lindman thought life as she knew it was over. In a way, she was right.

For graphic designer and Scientologist Lisa Lindman, 9/11 2001 marked the end of an era—and the beginning of a new life.

Video News Release

“I live in California, and what I went through that day was nothing compared with the tragedy that struck others personally,” says Lindman. “But I was completely overwhelmed when the attack took place. My boss didn’t make it any easier. I remember him saying ‘don’t even bother coming in to work. We’re going to war.’ I thought that was the end of life as we knew it.”

The fact was, life as Lindman knew it wasn’t that great. She was already having a rough time.

“Somehow, I used to specialize in attracting people who were bad for me,” she says. “I had too many ‘friends’ whose critical comments were ‘all for my own good’—people who put me down and made less of me and my work as a graphic designer.”

Lindman’s boyfriend was the worst of all. He was cheating on her, and although she knew that relationship was destructive, and wanted to break up, she couldn’t bring herself to do so.

With all this going on even before the terror attacks, Lindman was stressed out and started smoking pot because it numbed her to the way she felt.

Fortunately, just before 9/11, Lindman started reading Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health by L. Ron Hubbard. The heightened anxiety she felt that September day prompted her to find out whether what she had learned from the book was true.

Lindman describes her first encounter with Dianetics as “remarkable.”

“With my first Dianetics session I found the source of my unreasonable attachment to my boyfriend,” she says, “why I would put up with his treating me this way. It actually had nothing to do with him—it was something similar that had happened much earlier. As soon as I spotted that, I started to laugh. What a relief! Next time I saw him, I told him ‘I’m breaking up with you!’ And boy, did that feel good.”

What’s more, as she carried on with her Scientology studies, she continued feeling and doing better and better.

“The problem was, before Scientology I didn’t really know who I was or what I was doing,” she says. “Now I do.”

In an ironic turn of events, it was not long ago that Lindman had the opportunity to help a couple embroiled in the same kind of dead-end relationship that was ruining her life 10 years ago—a cheating husband and bitter wife making each other’s lives miserable. Divorce looked inevitable until, at Lindman’s suggestion, they took advantage of Scientology marriage counseling and the “Salvaging a Marriage” course at a Scientology Mission and sorted everything out.

Now 32, Lindman is living the kind of life she only dreamed of before. Married for the past two years, she and husband David use Scientology to keep their relationship, which she describes as “amazing,” on the right track.

“I have a say in my life now,” says Lindman. “It's not life happening to me—I am the one making my life go the way I want it to go.”